Using Mongoose With AWS Lambda

AWS Lambda is a popular service for running arbitrary functions without managing individual servers. Using Mongoose in your AWS Lambda functions is easy. Here’s a sample function that connects to a MongoDB instance and finds a single document:

const mongoose = require('mongoose');
let conn = null;
const uri = 'YOUR CONNECTION STRING HERE';
exports.handler = async function(event, context) {
  // Make sure to add this so you can re-use `conn` between function calls.
  // See https://www.mongodb.com/blog/post/serverless-development-with-nodejs-aws-lambda-mongodb-atlas
  context.callbackWaitsForEmptyEventLoop = false;
  // Because `conn` is in the global scope, Lambda may retain it between
  // function calls thanks to `callbackWaitsForEmptyEventLoop`.
  // This means your Lambda function doesn't have to go through the
  // potentially expensive process of connecting to MongoDB every time.
  if (conn == null) {
    conn = mongoose.createConnection(uri, {
      useNewUrlParser: true,
      useUnifiedTopology: true,
      // Buffering means mongoose will queue up operations if it gets
      // disconnected from MongoDB and send them when it reconnects.
      // With serverless, better to fail fast if not connected.
      bufferCommands: false, // Disable mongoose buffering
      // and tell the MongoDB driver to not wait more than 5 seconds
      // before erroring out if it isn't connected
      serverSelectionTimeoutMS: 5000
    });
    // `await`ing connection after assigning to the `conn` variable
    // to avoid multiple function calls creating new connections
    await conn;
    conn.model('Test', new mongoose.Schema({ name: String }));
  }
  const M = conn.model('Test');
  const doc = await M.findOne();
  console.log(doc);
  return doc;
};

Connection Helper

The above code works fine for a single Lambda function, but what if you want to reuse the same connection logic in multiple Lambda functions? You can export the below function.

'use strict';
const mongoose = require('mongoose');
let conn = null;
const uri = 'YOUR CONNECTION STRING HERE';
exports.connect = async function() {
  if (conn == null) {
    conn = mongoose.createConnection(uri, {
      useNewUrlParser: true,
      useUnifiedTopology: true,
      bufferCommands: false, // Disable mongoose buffering
      serverSelectionTimeoutMS: 5000
    });
    // `await`ing connection after assigning to the `conn` variable
    // to avoid multiple function calls creating new connections
    await conn;
  }
  return conn;
};

Using mongoose.connect()

You can also use mongoose.connect(), so you can use mongoose.model() to create models.

'use strict';
const mongoose = require('mongoose');
let conn = null;
const uri = 'YOUR CONNECTION STRING HERE';
exports.connect = async function() {
  if (conn == null) {
    conn = mongoose.connect(uri, {
      useNewUrlParser: true,
      useUnifiedTopology: true,
      bufferCommands: false, // Disable mongoose buffering
      serverSelectionTimeoutMS: 5000
    }).then(() => mongoose);
    // `await`ing connection after assigning to the `conn` variable
    // to avoid multiple function calls creating new connections
    await conn;
  }
  return conn;
};

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